1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and computer program for calculating time sensitive algorithms to be used in business process planning and, in particular, to those algorithms used for planning manufacturing processes based on time-sensitive data.
2. Description of Related Art
Business planning application systems typically deal with a similar general data architecture. In a relational database environment, the information is stored with two characteristics: first, a key structure made up of a combination of one or more key fields to uniquely identify records, and second, the information identified by the key fields is effective for one or more future time periods. For example, a manufacturing organization can gather and process sector yield information which is uniquely identified by a plan identification, product identification, process center, and sector. The yield information and other parametric data, e.g., operational parameters such as productivity, labor rates, cost of materials, overhead costs and the like, can take on different values in different time periods. The time periods over which such parametric data changes may not be the same for each data component.
In storing and accessing planning application information, it is important to optimize the data storage of constant or varying parametric data over future time periods. The problem is particularly important in the connection with time-sensitive parametric data of the types mentioned above. It would be useful to be able to extract discrete time-period information from a continuous variable time period interval which preserves the storage optimization and permits parametric data in different variable time period intervals to be combined in an algorithmic computation.
Bearing in mind the problems and deficiencies of the prior art, it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an improved method of dealing with time-sensitive parametric data in business planning applications.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method and computer program for calculating work algorithms which permits parametric data in different variable time period intervals to be combined in an algorithmic computation.
A further object of the invention is to provide a method and computer program for calculating work algorithms which does not require restricting time-sensitive data to the same rigid, fixed intervals for each parametric data record.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a method and computer program for calculating work algorithms which permits use of variable time intervals, and overcomes the difficulty of combining parametric data stored in variable intervals which are not necessarily the same.
Still other objects and advantages of the invention will in part be obvious and will in part be apparent from the specification.